Case Study: Defense Threat Reduction Agency achieves rapid pathogen identification—reducing DNA analysis from days to minutes—with Wazoku

Defense Threat Reduction Agency - Customer Case Study

Wazoku and InnoCentive partnered with the U.S. Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) to tackle a critical biodefense challenge: DNA-based pathogen identification that could take up to a week, leaving troops and civilians vulnerable. DTRA launched a $1 million global challenge to find a robust, field‑ready algorithm capable of identifying organisms rapidly from streams of DNA sequences.

Using InnoCentive’s online platform to enable remote collaboration, 2,793 solvers submitted 17 solutions over 289 days; an international three‑person team won by cutting time‑to‑identification from days to tens of minutes. The algorithm represents a dramatic breakthrough in pathogen detection, enabling faster, more targeted medical intervention, with broad military and commercial applications and the potential to save thousands of lives.

Defense Threat Reduction Agency

Christian Whitchurch

Devices Branch Manager